The Passion of Cleopatra (Ramses the Damned 2)

Ramses, he'd said. Not Mr. Ramsey.

"Alex, you mustn't--"

"Mustn't what? Please, Julie. I understand. Truly. I do. You thought it would spare my heart to think her a madwoman. Perhaps you thought it was a privilege to be the only member of our traveling party with no real sense of the true nature of our journey. No sense of the momentousness of it. Surely, my father knows, and that in part explains his long absence."

"Alex, you must understand, I--"

"I do understand, Julie. This is not sarcasm with which I speak. But it isn't easy to say these things, so I ask for your respect."

"Alex, you don't understand what she is."

"Neither do you!"

She recoiled from his anger; she'd never heard anything quite like it in his voice.

"And neither does Ramses," he said, "and that's exactly the point, isn't it? The two of you sought to protect me from a being you yourselves did not truly understand. You still don't. She does not even understand herself. Only one thing is clear. She now desires only to return to the shadows in which you both would have wished her to remain. And that should satisfy you both, shouldn't it? Even if I go with her. For the time she has left. And I ask you...No. No, I don't ask it. I demand it, Julie. I demand that you not follow us."

Us.

"Where is she now?" Julie asked. "One of the tenant farms? Alex, you must tell me."

"Goodbye, Julie." His voice had softened, and he took a step towards her, closing the distance he'd opened when he'd pulled away from just the thought of her touch. "Goodbye. It's clear to me now you and Ramses stand on the edge of a magnificent and terrifying new world that has yet to be fully discovered. No doubt this new Ethiopian friend of yours hails from it. I hope it will bring you much joy and magic, this world. But I have no desire to be part of it. And neither does she."

*

How was it these words could overwhelm her more than anything she'd seen these past few months? What was the true source of these tears that gripped her now? Guilt? Remorse? It didn't seem so.

He gripped her shoulders, leaned in, and kissed her on the forehead. A blessing, this gesture, after the way he'd pulled away from her only minutes before. Then he was trotting across the square in the direction of his car. For now he was afraid. Afraid that she would pursue. Afraid that she would alert Ramses, and they would begin searching for wherever he was hiding her, the being that was, but was not quite, Cleopatra.

She wanted to go after him. But she was paralyzed. Paralyzed by his revelations and his directness--his earnestness and his flashes of anger which, just like the vulnerability he'd shown in the weeks prior, were so utterly new to him.

He could change. He could accept impossible truths. This was what he had just said to her, was it not?

She watched his car putter through the square and disappear from view.

A moment later, she heard footsteps behind her.

Ramses embraced her.

She turned to him, gave herself to his arms, buried her face against his broad chest. No sense in trying to hide her tears, she realized. He could hear their effect on her breath. He could feel them through his shirt, no doubt.

Did it fall on her now to keep this secret from Ramses? Was that the only possible way to honor Alex's request? His demand, as he'd put it.

"She's with him, Ramses. She's with him. He knows everything she knows. And now he seeks to go away with her, and he demands that we do not follow."

"And he was angry with you?" he asked.

She looked up at him.

"Not quite," she whispered, "not enough to explain these miserable tears. And I don't simply feel remorseful or guilty. So I can't explain this sense of overwhelming sadness."

"I can, my darling."

"Well, of course you can."

"The secrets we kept from him. Your concern for him. The party. All of it prolonged the business of your forced engagement. It was the one thing that still connected you to your mortal life. And now, in asking to be set free, Alex has set you free as well."

"Indeed. He said we stand on the edge of a magnificent and terrifying new world that has yet to be fully discovered, you and I. But he does not wish to be part of it. And neither does she."